Wired: Microsoft Office Drops Support For Older File Formats

January 3 2008

This story is getting a lot of play over the last 24 hours, as Microsoft uses a service pack (!) to turn off support for various non-current MS file formats in Office:

You might not have noticed it yet, but the recent service pack 3 release for Microsoft Office 2003 contains a hidden "feature" -- it disables support for older Microsoft Office formats. If you've got any old Word, Excel, 1-2-3, Quattro, or Corel Draw documents hanging around your hard drive you'll need to delve into the Windows Registry to open them.

A note posted to the Microsoft Support Center says that "by default, these file formats are blocked because they are less secure," and goes on to warn that "they may pose a risk to you."
Oh please.  And the fix -- a registry edit, which MS always warns against.

Link: Wired: Microsoft Office Drops Support For Older File Formats > (Thanks, Alan)

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Microsoft  Add/View Comments [13]

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  1. 1  Jim Casale  | 1/3/2008 11:57:39 AM

    Geeze and I thought it was our network god's that pushed out a policy that disabled me opening exports from Notes databases. :-O (Yes, they do things and don't tell us)

    I have used the workaround but it is cumbersome and totally annoying. Unless it has changed since I first tried it you have to add directory paths to your registry, and have the file in those paths in order to open it.

    And I wonder why I get chills up and down my spine when I think about Exchange and Outlook.

  1. 2  Keith Brooks http://lotustech.blogspot.com | 1/3/2008 12:04:32 PM

    Not long ago I posted about MS causing other disruptions within my system from Office 2007 updates, I wonder now if they were related.

    That one broke my mailto links for Notes.

    You know my data, and yours, goes way farther back than 2000.

    Sure I don't use many of them, but as i recently went back to 2 clients I had not seen in over 12 years it was nice to have my old files accessible.

    And my R3/4 notes mail too.

  1. 3  Jim Casale  | 1/3/2008 12:10:17 PM

    Update. The support center link that Ed references is different than the one I originally read when I first couldn't open wk4 files. This one doesn't seem as bad as the original "fix" but it is still crazy to have to do this.

  1. 4  Mark  | 1/3/2008 12:43:40 PM

    ...to standardize on ODF. Perhaps now, corporate and academic America will pay more attention to the issue.

  1. 5  Bob Brodsky  | 1/3/2008 1:39:08 PM

    Wait for it!

    ----------------

    The following formats cannot be opened or saved in Excel 2007:

    WK1 (1-2-3)

    WK4 (1-2-3)

    WJ3 (1-2-3 Japanese) (.wj3)

    WKS (1-2-3)

    WK3,(1-2-3)

    WK1,FMT(1-2-3)

    WJ2 (1-2-3 Japanese) (.wj2)

    WJ3, FJ3 (1-2-3 Japanese) (.wj3)

    DBF 2 (dBASE II)

    WQ1 (Quattro Pro/DOS)

    WK3,FM3(1-2-3)

    Microsoft Excel Chart (.xlc)

    WK1,ALL(1-2-3)

    WJ1 (1-2-3 Japanese) (.wj1)

    WKS (Works Japanese) (.wks)

  1. 6  John LeJeune http://www.johnlejeune.com/The_Blog/The_Blog.html | 1/3/2008 2:40:21 PM

    Rob Weir has also posted his own spin on this topic with his perspective here.

    { Link }

    This is an excellent read on the topic.

  1. 7  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 1/3/2008 3:09:46 PM

    Let me tell you about a conversation I had with a public sector customer early in 2007. They said they had a policy being put in place which would require that, for documents created today, they would have to be assured they could open those documents in 80 (eighty) years time. They said this was the case for an open standards document format, as proprietary document formats left no assurance of being able to meet this mandate.

    And this blog post nicely illustrates that scenario.

  1. 8  Keith Brooks http://lotustech.blogspot.com | 1/3/2008 3:38:34 PM

    80 years? We should all live to see that day down the road, if you ask some Japanese clients they will probably tell you 100's of years.

  1. 9  Bill McCuistion  | 1/3/2008 10:52:19 PM

    Seems we need more monks.

  1. 10    | 1/4/2008 8:51:10 AM

    Removed - no anonymous comments allowed

  1. 11  Ian Scott  | 1/4/2008 1:14:06 PM

    @9 - Is that the monks telepathically communicating the concept of thousands of Notes workgroups collaborating all over the universe? If anoyone can remember it and has it and posts it YouTube that would be cosmic!

  1. 12  Ian Scott  | 1/4/2008 1:16:26 PM

    ...anyone...NOT anoyone!

  1. 13  Lars Olufsen http://www.olufsphere.com | 1/8/2008 3:28:54 AM

    I think WIRED gets it just right in their conclusion here { Link }

    "Naturally, there’s an alternative which is somewhat easier (and free): just grab a copy of OpenOffice which can handle the older file formats. Once you’ve got them open, now might be a good time to convert them to ODF documents lest Office 2017 decide to again disable support for older file formats."